


so far from who i was

by idontgiveamcfuck



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/F, Just a Bunch of Random Oneshots, Natasha Romanov Feels, Natasha Romanov Is Not A Robot, Natasha Romanov-centric, also fluff cause im not evil, there will be angst, will add more characters and relationhips the more i write
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-12
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-26 23:58:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,497
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19779082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/idontgiveamcfuck/pseuds/idontgiveamcfuck
Summary: Series of oneshots which centre around Natasha and her relationships with other characters, because I want to.





	so far from who i was

**Author's Note:**

> Set after TWS but before AoU.  
> Natasha's been on the run, she breaks into Maria's apartment after being injured. Tony is just trying to drop off some files.

Natasha didn’t really know what compelled her to scale the side of  Maria’s apartment building in order to break into  her apartment but here she was. 

Maybe it was due to the blood loss from the bullet wound in her side, or maybe it was the craving for the vodka Natasha knew she had stocked the apartment with before all her covers were blown. Either way, it didn’t really matter to her at that particular moment as she tumbled through the window into the apartment. 

Natasha groaned as she landed roughly, jolting the wound in her side. She lay on the floor for a moment, just taking in the apartment. It was like she hadn’t been gone for over 8 months. Her shoes still sat by the door; her favourite leather jacket still hung on the coat rack; her baseball cap , which had a red hourglass figure embroidered on the front, a gift from Tony, still sat on the table in the entree way. 

It felt like a punch to the gut. A feeling of heavy guilt settled in her stomach as she pushed herself to her feet. She hadn’t planned to come back until she’d sorted everything out. The files she’d leaked onto the internet had put a target on her back from old and new enemies, she couldn’t let them harm the people she loved. Yet here she was hurting the person she loved the most.  _ Hypocrite _ _.  _

Slowly she shuffled to the bathroom, grimacing at the trail of blood she left. She had three hours until Maria finished work, which meant she had three hours to stitch herself up and make it look like she hadn’t been there. That was the hope anyway, Natasha knew that it wouldn’t matter how well she cleaned up Maria would know that she’d been in their apartment.  _ Not their apartment, Marias.  _ She’d lost any claim to the apartment when she’d left, leaving behind only a small note that she’d be back once the dust had settled. 

Natasha stared at herself for a moment in the bathroom mirror. Her face was thinner, her cheekbones more prominent. Her usual vibrant green eyes were now dull and lifeless. Her face was smeared with blood, from where she’d wiped her nose after someone had got a lucky hit in. The only part of her that seemed to stay the same was her bright red head. Although slightly longer and more unkempt as her natural curls had attempted to take back control, it was still the same blood red.  _ The only constant in her life. _

She retrieved the first aid kit and bottle of vodka from the bathroom cabinet and sunk to the floor, propped up against the side of the bath. She flicked the cap off the bottle and took a large swig; smiling as it burned on the way down her throat. 

She balanced the vodka on the edge of the bath and opened the first aid kit. It took three attempts but she managed to thread the needle with shaky hands. Slowly she peeled her shirt off, wincing as it tugged at the skin around her wound where the blood had congealed. 

Luckily the bullet had passed straight through her so she wouldn’t have to fish around for it, she was also pretty sure that the bullet hadn’t nicked any of her internal organs as she was sure she would've bled out by now.  That’s what she hoped anyway.

She grabbed the bottle of vodka and took a deep breath before pouring it over the wound. She let out a long stream of curses as the alcohol sterilized the wound. Eventually, the burning subsided and she picked up the needle. Natasha didn’t hesitate as she began to sew the wound shut, she’d done it enough times to herself. When she finished sewing the entree wound shut, she turned awkwardly to sew the exit wound. It took a little longer but she managed with minimal fumbling. 

Natasha slumped back against the bath. She could feel the exhaustion from the past couple of weeks finally catching up with her. She’d only managed to catch a few hours' sleep every couple of days and even then, it was restless. However now that she was back in a  place , she once called her home, a place that made her feel safe, she couldn’t help but let her eyes fall shut.  _ 20 minutes. She’d give herself 20 minutes to rest.  _

__________________

Natasha jerked awake to the sound of the bathroom door being nudged open.  _ How had she missed the sound of the front door opening? She couldn’t let Maria see her _ _ ; _ __ _ it had been a mistake coming here _ _.  _ She pushed herself into a sitting position and braced herself for what was to come.  This was about to hurt a lot more than the bullet wound in her side.

“You look like shit.” A voice that  defiantly wasn’t Maria said. 

Natasha ’s head snapped  up to  look at Tony, his  repulsor melt ed away from his hand and back into his watch. He was wearing a well-tailored suit, with the top button of his shirt opened and his tie loosened like he’d just come from the office. 

“I’ve seen you looking worse,” Natasha thought back to when she had been sent undercover in Stark Industries. How he looked when he was dying from palladium poisoning. “What are you doing here?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Natasha raised an eyebrow. Tony gulped. “I was dropping off files for your girlfriend to look over. She’s still your  girlfriend, right? You guys didn’t break up while you were on the run?”

Truth be told Natasha didn’t know. She hadn’t contacted Maria at all while on the r un. Natasha wouldn't hold it against Maria if she decided she’d had enough over the last few months, she hadn't exactly been fair to her. Then again, she’d kept Natasha's stuff in the apartment, she hadn’t boxed it all up and set it on fire.  Yet.

“I don’t know,” Natasha admitted in a small voice. The blood loss, the exhaustion, the guilt had become too much. She could feel the walls she’d spent the past couple of months rebuilding begin to crumble. 

Tony's expression softened as he finally stepped into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him. He sat down next to her trying to avoid the small puddle of blood that had pooled around her before she had sewn the wound shut.

“When you first left, she was angry not with you but with herself.” Natasha frowned in confusion. “She was angry that she wasn’t able to protect you, there was some other stuff but that’s a conversation you need to have with her not me.” 

Natasha looked at the floor in shame. She knew that her leaving would hurt Maria but she’d assumed that Maria would be angry with her, blame her but instead Maria had blamed herself.

“Why did you leave Natasha?” There was no judgement in Tony's voice. 

She understood his confusion. He’d seen how happy she was with Maria, he also  naively believed that the Avengers would offer her the protection she sought for her family. He didn’t quite understand that her enemies didn’t come in the form of big boss battles, instead hers came from walking too close to someone on a crowded pavement so they could slip a knife between your ribs, where someone could slip something into your coffee because you’d been to a certain coffee shop one too many times. 

“I was putting Maria in danger; people were beginning to figure out there was more than a working relationship between us. I didn’t have a choice.” Natasha took a swig from the bottle of vodka. She couldn’t do this conversation completely sober.

“Bullshit. You always have a choice. You  and I both know that Maria is more than capable of handling herself. Do you want to know why I think you left?”

“I think you’re going to tell me regardless of what I want,” Natasha stated dryly.

“I think that you don’t know who you are anymore and that scares you.” Natasha scoffed. She didn’t get scared. “You have always controlled what things people know about you, letting slip enough information to give life to the person you want to be while keeping the darker stuff, the stuff you don’t want anyone to see, buried. Now though, now you’ve lost that control. You no longer have a say in what people know about you because you dumped all your secrets onto the internet. You ran because most of your darkest, dirtiest secrets are out there for people to judge you by, and you’re afraid of the judgements people will make.” Natasha glared at Tony. Had any other man been on the receiving end they would’ve clamped their mouth shut but nothing ever shut Tony Stark up. “So rather than sticking around and figuring everything out, you pulled a suicide run. I know you’re smart Natasha, I’ve seen how many bounties are on your head, we both know that you didn’t plan to come back. You realized you can’t wipe out a ledger that everyone has access to, so you didn’t think you’d will ever be able to redeem yourself.” Natasha cast her gaze to the floor. She hated Tony and his ability to figure her out. “You knew Maria would be in danger whether or not you stuck around because she was the deputy director of SHIELD, yet you still left. You convinced yourself that leaving on this suicide tour of the world was because it would be safer for Maria when it’s actually because you don’t think you deserve the chance to be happy. You think your ledger is overflowing and you’re letting yourself drown in it.”

Natasha took a moment to collect herself allowing silence to descend between the two. She wished that she could tell Tony that he was completely wrong, that his stupid theory was just that, a theory. However, they both knew it was the truth,  it would be insulting to pretend otherwise. Natasha could only hope that Tony had kept his thoughts away from Maria. 

“Pepper helped you come up with that speech didn’t she.” Natasha joked trying to lighten the mood. 

Natasha realized her efforts to lighten the mood and move away from the  subject had failed when Tony gave her a look. She took a deep breath in an attempt to calm herself. She couldn’t talk about this stuff right now, not ever.

“Natasha.” Tony's voice was serious. 

“Okay, you’re right Tony. Is that what you wanted to hear? You managed to figure out the Black Widow, there's an ego boost for you.” Natasha couldn’t help but lash out. She felt like a trapped animal. “I have no place in this world.”

“What about Maria?” Tony asked. Natasha felt her throat tighten as the guilt made her feel  nauseous .

“She’s always deserved better; I was always just too selfish to let her go,” Natasha said in a broken voice.

Tony was silent for a few minutes, as Natasha continued to absent-mindedly sip from the bottle of vodka. He let out a loud huff before reaching over and extracting the vodka from  Natasha's grip. 

“You’ve had a long enough pity party,” Tony said as he placed the vodka back into the bathroom cabinet. “ You wouldn’t have come back here for no reason, which leads me to think you don’t want to continue on your suicide tour anymore. That you want to come home.”

“I can’t come back, Tony. Not while red continues to pour from my ledger.” 

“But do you want to come back? To the Avengers? To Maria?” Tony questioned.

She let out a small sigh, leaning her head back against the bath. She’d gotten on the flight to America during a moment of weakness. A moment where all she wanted was to see her teammates, hold Clint and Laura’s kids, to kiss Maria. Yet long after that moment of weakness had passed, she continued to stay in America until she ultimately found herself back here in this apartment, a place she’d once called home. Subconsciously that moment had never passed, she’d just distracted herself until she no longer could. 

“Yes,” Natasha answered her voice cracking. 

“So, come back.  The team needs you now more than ever.”

She wanted nothing more than to be able to come back, but she couldn’t come back and pick up the mantle of hero. The title of hero was something you earned; the only titles she’d earned were drenched in blood.

“I can’t be an Avenger Tony. I can’t be a hero. Not after everything I’ve done.” 

“So, don’t be.” Natasha tilted her head to the side. The thought being allowed to come back and not be an Avenger hadn't crossed her mind. She’d assumed that her team wouldn’t give her an option. “We just want you to come home, Natasha. If that means you stay in the shadows and do god knows what? So be it. Hell, if you don’t want to do anything like that then Pepper could use a new assistant because I’m fed up of being handed things.” 

“You’d really just let me come back? I know you’ve read my file Tony, you know about Sao Paulo,  Drakoff's daughter, the children's hospital .” Natasha barely managed to get names out as if they caused physical pain to say.

“I won’t make judgements of you based on your past, just like I hope that you won’t make judgements of me based on my past.” Tony sighed. “Natasha we’ve known each other long enough, hell before SHIELD fell, Pepper had you on speed dial for when I got too engrossed in a project. Over the years I’d like to think I got to know you and you are not the same woman who did those things. I think it’s time you cut yourself a little bit of slack because I don’t think many people who had the upbringing you did would be able to be the person you are today.”

Natasha pushed herself to her feet. The serum in her blood had healed her wound enough that she only felt a slight twinge in her side. She just hoped Tony wouldn’t notice. It was not something she was in the mood to explain after their heart to heart. Natasha stumbled forward, partially because she was still lightheaded from the blood loss, and partially because she needed to keep up the act of someone with a bullet wound in their side. 

“Where are you going?” Tony asked. He quickly jumped to his feet and hovered behind her.

“To clean the apartment. Maria is probably going to kill me for being gone so long but she will defiantly kill me if she comes back and her apartment is covered in blood.”

“You’re staying?” Tony said his voice filled with disbelief. 

“Yeah. I think it’s about time I came home.”

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed :) Sorry if you were here for the gay, I promise there will be more in future chapters but I just love the friendship between Natasha and Tony. Feel like MCU did their relationship kinda dirty.  
> Just gonna say that each chapter isn't connected properly cause I cba to make sure everything fits in the same timeline plus some stuff I've got planned would mess everything up.  
> Anywayyyy thanks for reading, if you wanna send me a prompt or something my tumblr is: idontgiveamcfuck


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